1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention is data processing, or, more specifically, methods, apparatus, and products for firmware management in a computing system.
2. Description of Related Art
The development of the EDVAC computer system of 1948 is often cited as the beginning of the computer era. Since that time, computer systems have evolved into extremely complicated devices. Today's computers are much more sophisticated than early systems such as the EDVAC. Computer systems typically include a combination of hardware and software components, application programs, operating systems, processors, buses, memory, input/output devices, and so on. As advances in semiconductor processing and computer architecture push the performance of the computer higher and higher, more sophisticated computer software has evolved to take advantage of the higher performance of the hardware, resulting in computer systems today that are much more powerful than just a few years ago.
Many computer systems today include the ability to store multiple versions of the same firmware—that is, multiple firmware images of the same firmware. Typically one firmware image is the most current version of the firmware available while another firmware image is older and known to be stable. In this way, the computing system utilizes the older, stable firmware version for failover. That is, when one firmware image fails, the computing system reverts to the firmware image known to be stable. Likewise, when the firmware is updated, the most current firmware image is replaced with the updated firmware image, while the older, stable firmware image is unchanged. When failover occurs then a stale, older version of the firmware is implemented. Although usually stable, many features and abilities may be missing from the older firmware image.